Penal Laws

Penal Laws in Ireland

Penal Laws, laws passed against Roman Catholics in Britain and Ireland after the Reformation that penalized the practice of the Roman Catholic religion and imposed civil disabilities on Catholics. Various acts passed in the 16th and 17th centuries prescribed fines and imprisonment for participation in Catholic worship and severe penalties, including death, for Catholic priests who practiced their ministry in Britain or Ireland. Other laws barred Catholics from voting, holding public office, owning land, bringing religious items from Rome into Britain, publishing or selling Catholic primers, or teaching.

Sporadically enforced in the 17th century and ignored in the 18th, the Penal Laws were completely nullified by the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1791), the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), the Roman Catholic Charities Act (1832), and the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1926). See Catholic Emancipation.

Wikipedia goes on to explain some of the things Catholic and non-reforming Protestants were restricted from doing:

With the defeat of Catholic attempts to regain power and lands in Ireland, a ruling class which became known later as the Protestant Ascendancy sought to ensure dominance with the passing of a number of laws to restrict the religious, political, and economic activities of Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. Harsher laws were introduced for political reasons during the long War of the Spanish Succession that ended in 1714. James Stuart, the son of James II, the "Old Pretender", was recognised by the Holy See as the legitimate King of Great Britain and Ireland until his death in 1766, and Catholics were obliged to support him. He also approved the appointments of all the Irish Catholic hierarchy, who were drawn from his most fervent supporters. These aspects provided the political basis for the new laws passed for several decades after 1695. Interdicts faced by Catholics and

Dissenters under the penal laws were:

Exclusion of Catholics from most public offices (since 1607), Presbyterians were also barred from public office from 1707.
Ban on intermarriage with Protestants; repealed 1778.
Presbyterian marriages were not legally recognised by the state.
Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces, rescinded by Militia Act of 1793.
Oath of Supremacy required for membership of the Parliament of Ireland from 1652; rescinded 1662–1691; renewed 1691–1829; also applying to the successive parliaments of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until the Catholic Relief Act of 1829.
Disenfranchising Act 1728, exclusion from the parliamentary franchise until the Relief Act of 1793.
Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed (respectively) 1793 and 1829.
Education Act 1695 – ban on foreign education; repealed 1782.
Bar to Catholics and Protestant Dissenters entering Trinity College Dublin; repealed 1793.
On a death by a Catholic, his legatee could benefit by conversion to the Church of Ireland.
Popery Act – Catholic inheritances of land were to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons with the exception that if the eldest son and heir converted to Protestantism that he would become the one and only tenant of estate and portions for other children not to exceed one third of the estate. This "Gavelkind" system had previously been abolished by 1600.
Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism on pain of Praemunire: forfeiting all property estates and legacy to the monarch of the time and remaining in prison at the monarch's pleasure. In addition, forfeiting the monarch's protection. No injury however atrocious could have any action brought against it or any reparation for such.
Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778.
Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics on pain of a £500 fine that was to be donated to the Blue Coat hospital in Dublin.
Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land.
Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5 (to keep horses suitable for military activity out of the majority's hands)
Roman Catholic lay priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not able to do so until 1778.
When allowed, new Catholic churches were to be built from wood, not stone, and away from main roads.
'No person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school or instruct youth in learning within this realm' upon pain of a £20 fine and three months in prison for every such offence. Repealed in 1782.
All rewards not paid by the crown for alerting authorities of offences to be levied upon the Catholic populace within parish and county.
Historians disagree on how rigorously these laws were enforced. The consensus view is that enforcement depended on the attitudes of local magistrates bringing or hearing cases; some of whom were rigorous, others more liberal.
As a continuing reminder of their defeat in the Williamite War, the Whig historian Lord Macaulay suggested that the Penal-Law regime helps account for the failure of Irish Roman Catholics to heed the Jacobite call when the Scottish army of the Young Pretender marched on London in 1745. Their submission was the effect of "the habit of daily enduring insult and oppression" and of a "brokenness of heart". The systematic discrimination and exclusion from favour kept their "natural chiefs" abroad.
There were indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy, and ambition; but they were to be found everywhere except in Ireland, at Versailles and at Saint Ilfonso, in the armies of Frederic and Maria Theresa. One in exile became a Marshal of France. Another became Prime Minister of Spain. If he had staid [sic] in his native land, he would have been regarded as inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squires who had signed the Declaration against Transubstantiation.

Catholic relief 1771–1800

From 1758, before the death of the Old Pretender, who styled himself James III, ad-hoc groups of the remaining Catholic nobility and merchants worked towards repeal of the penal laws and an accommodation within the Hanoverian system. These were based locally on county lines. An earlier attempt in 1727 had met with strong opposition from the Jacobite movement, which resisted any negotiations with the Hanoverians, being usurpers.[9] By 1760 eminent Catholics such as Lord Trimlestown, Lord Kenmare, and Charles O'Conor of Belanagare persuaded the more liberal Protestants that they presented no political threat, and that reforms must follow. Events abroad in the 1760s, such as the outcome of the Seven Years' War, the death of the Old Pretender (1766), the emerging "Age of Enlightenment", and the Suppression of the Society of Jesus by Europe's Catholic monarchs, all confirmed their position.

On the death of the Old Pretender in January 1766, the Holy See recognised the Hanoverian dynasty as legitimate, and so the main political basis for the laws was removed and the slow process of Catholic emancipation began, with the repeal of some of the penal laws by the Catholic Relief Acts of 1771, 1778 and 1793. However, the long-drawn-out pace of reform ensured that the question of religious discrimination dominated Irish life and was a constant source of division.

Visitors from abroad such as Arthur Young in the late 1770s also deplored the penal laws as being contrary to the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment, and illogical as they were unenforced. In his Tour in Ireland (1780), that was sponsored by many landlords, Young mentioned the laws twice:

.. the cruel laws against the Roman Catholics of this country, remain the marks of illiberal barbarism. Why should not the industrious man have a spur to his industry, whatever be his religion...?

Talking with Chief Baron Foster, Young commented:

In conversation on the Popery laws, I expressed my surprise at their severity; he said they were severe in the letter, but never executed. His Lordship did justice to the merits of the Roman Catholics, by observing that they were in general a very sober, honest, and industrious people. This brought to my mind an admirable expression of Mr Burke's in the English House of Commons: Connivance is the relaxation of slavery, not the definition of Liberty.

The Catholic Committee and the Back Lane Parliament

In 1773, Kenmare convened a meeting of prominent Catholics in Dublin, representatives of the surviving Catholic gentry and senior bishops. While pleading for penal laws relief, their Catholic Committee foreswore any intention of overturning the Williamite Settlement. They also demonstrated their loyalty by helping to recruit the soldiers in Ireland to fight for the Crown in the American Colonies in the 1770s and, later, by supporting the authorities as they suppressed Whiteboy agrarian protest in the 1780s.

Assisted by Edmund Burke, who in 1764 had drafted a critical commentary on the penal laws that was widely circulated at Westminster, the pro-government policy paid dividends. The Irish Act of 1774 allowed any subject of George III "of whatever persuasion to testify their allegiance to him", and the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 allowed Catholics, on taking a modified oath that abjured the temporal, but not the spiritual, authority of the Pope, to purchase land and join the army. A further measure followed in 1782: the Irish Parliament, acknowledging the tolerated practice of the Catholic faith, repealed the laws that compelled Catholic bishops to quit the kingdom, and binding those who had assisted at Mass to identify the celebrant. In addition, Catholics might now own a horse worth £5, and, with the consent of their local Protestant bishop, open their own schools. In February 1791 elections to the Committee from the counties and from the five Dublin parishes brought a dramatic change in its composition. The gentry and bishops were now outnumbered by representatives of those Burke described as the "new race of Catholics": the emergent Catholic mercantile and professional middle class. Stirred by news of revolution and reform in France and dissatisfied with the lack of progress since 1782, they demanded an immediate repeal of the remaining penal laws. This caused a split in the Committee with Kenmare leading a withdrawal of the more cautious gentry and bishops.

Under the leadership of the Dublin merchant, John Keogh, the Committee signalled a new departure by dismissing Edmund Burke's son, Richard Burke, as assistant secretary and replacing him with Theobald Wolfe Tone, another Protestant but a known democrat. In Dublin Tone was a leading member of the Society of United Irishmen first formed in October 1791 by his Presbyterian ("Dissenter") friends in Belfast, during the town's enthusiasm for the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and its defence by Thomas Paine.

In the 1792 Irish Parliamentary session, further petitions in favour of a Catholic relief bill, introduced at London's behest to secure Catholic loyalty in the impending confrontation with the new French Republic, were met with contempt. In response the Committee organised a country-wide election, open all male communicants in each parish, to a national convention. The Committee's insistence that it did not intend to "disturb" or "weaken" the establishment in Ireland of the Protestant religion or the security of the Protestant crown, did not reassure the authorities, who saw the hand of the United Irishmen. The Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, called on London for additional troops.

Moved by parallels with the election to the National Constituent Assembly in France, the democratic exercise also caused alarm in the Catholic hierarchy. At the opening the Convention, assembled in the Tailor's Hall in Back Lane, Dublin, in December 1792, Keogh was careful to place two prelates seated on either side of the chairs. But the petition, as finally approved and signed by the delegates, was presented to the bishops as a fait accompli, with no implication that their sanction was sought or obtained.

How did this all affect Armagh and local areas.

The Armagh disturbances was a period of intense sectarian fighting in the 1780s and 1790s between the Ulster Protestant Peep o' Day Boys and the Roman Catholic Defenders, in County Armagh, Kingdom of Ireland, culminating in the Battle of the Diamond in 1795.

Background

In County Armagh, Protestants and Catholics were roughly equal in number, in what was then Ireland's most populous county. Whilst there was sporadic rioting by Protestant and Catholic mobs in Armagh Town, the rest of the county was largely at peace

Things got out of order and The Peop o’ Day Boys were formed. They were Loyalist The name Peep o' Day Boys (also Break o' Day Boys) came from the early morning raiding of Catholic homes. The reason for these raids initially seems to have been to confiscate weapons, which Catholics were prohibited from having under the Penal Laws.

As the majority of magistrates in County Armagh were anti-Catholic, with the police only successfully countering daytime disturbances, night-time acts went unpunished. This resulted in Catholics having to defend themselves, and to so they formed a night-time neighbourhood watch, keeping an eye out for Peep o' Day Boys gangs. Having seen the fighting between the fleets go unpunished, Catholics became encouraged to form a similar grouping for their own defence. At Granemore, near Ballymacnab, an area that was victim to a Peep o' Days Boys raid, Catholics would form the Defenders. At first they were supplied with arms bought from a Protestant shopkeeper in Armagh, but later began to raid the houses of gentry for arms. They embarked on night-watch and patrols of areas under danger of attack. Soon this organisation spread throughout the county. By 1786 they accnd the Peep o' Day Boys were opposed to each other.

The Defenders started out as independent local groups, defensive in nature; however, by 1790 they had merged into a widespread secret-oath fraternal organisation consisting of lodges, associated to a head-lodge led by a Grand Master and committee. The Defenders were greatly influenced by Freemasonry, and were made up of working class Catholics. Each member had to swear an oath, which despite the Penal Laws which they were subject to, included the swearing of obedience to King George the Third, his successors, and the government. The oath itself was revised several times, but kept its central character whilst focusing more on loyalty and solidarity.

Eventually everything would lead up to The Battle of The Diamond, at Loughgall in 1795 and the formation of The Orange Order. Below, I have just put my record from my About Armagh Map below.

Battle of The Diamond (1795), Loughgall

The Diamond, Loughgall, Co. Armagh BT61 8PH

www.communities-ni.gov.uk/services/historic-environment-map-viewer states:

BATTLE The Diamond

DATE 21/09/1795

SIDEA Orangemen

SIDEB Defenders

OUTCOME A: victory

IRISH GRID REF H94115409

TYPE Skrmish

CENTURY 18

MAIN_REF Colles,R (1920), The History of Ulster, Vol 4, p127

According to www.lurganancestry.com/diamond.htm:

“The Battle of the Diamond was a violent confrontation between the Catholic Defenders and a Protestant faction including Peep o' Day Boys, Orange Boys and local tenant farmers that took place on September 21, 1795 near Loughgall. The Protestants were the victors, killing between 4 and 30 Defenders. It led to the foundation of the Orange Order.

Videos:

1. “30 Second Historian - A Brief History of... the Battle of the Diamond” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3q5_kLgU_k

2. “Origins of Orange Order” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY4TZaSK7HI